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The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

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Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#141

Post by thebiss »

incompatible wrote: post #126
jacques_chester wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MTA's Second Avenue line in New York comes out to more than AU$2Bn per km, on my reckoning (US$2.6Bn/mile). It's the current world champion for expensive holes. The fact is that megaprojects basically never come in anywhere near their schedule or budget. That's because of a selection bias. When you crunch the numbers honestly, megaprojects come out as a terrible on a cost-benefit or ROI analysis. The ones that ge…

But it's just a subway tunnel, which have been built in cities since the 19th century. Is it really so much harder to do such "megaprojects" in the 21st century, with the vastly better equipment now available?

Wikipedia has a good summary of the construction techniques. Only 10% of it is just below street level using cut-and-cover technique.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#Construct...

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#142

Post by drcross »

astrodust wrote: post #66
mc3 wrote: post #41

ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Otherwise do I submit this to HN? https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling . I think tunnels are the future though for cities. But I'd prefer trains to be running in them, or roads that only allow electric public transport. Edit. In 1988 they started work on the Channel Tunnel UK to France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Elon's making bold claims about how he's going to disrupt the tunnelling industry but so far the results are unimpressive to say the least. Tunnel boring is a complex, multi-faceted civil engineering discipline with a large number of well-funded firms that are aggressively competing and innovating. In this space Elon is utterly insignificant. The ELI5 version is: "Elon thinks he can dig tunnels faster and cheaper tha…

You're bad mouthing someone who regularly lands rockets on ships in the ocean and has bootstrapped the first electric car company. I think Elon deserves the benefit of the doubt here.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#143

Post by BurningFrog »

incompatible wrote: post #126
jacques_chester wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MTA's Second Avenue line in New York comes out to more than AU$2Bn per km, on my reckoning (US$2.6Bn/mile). It's the current world champion for expensive holes. The fact is that megaprojects basically never come in anywhere near their schedule or budget. That's because of a selection bias. When you crunch the numbers honestly, megaprojects come out as a terrible on a cost-benefit or ROI analysis. The ones that ge…

But it's just a subway tunnel, which have been built in cities since the 19th century. Is it really so much harder to do such "megaprojects" in the 21st century, with the vastly better equipment now available?

This is a very regulated era, and the art of extracting money from megaprojects have been perfected by many parties.

It seems that China does not suffer from this "cost disease", but I don't know any real facts.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#144

Post by astrodust »

cgy1 wrote: post #78
astrodust wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's solve traffic by building more roads!" Elon has a lot to learn about induced demand.

He has said that he doesn't believe in induced demand: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626?s=20

This is like not believing in climate change.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#145

Post by BurningFrog »

clairity wrote: post #117
astrodust wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's solve traffic by building more roads!" Elon has a lot to learn about induced demand.

induced demand is often (intentionally?) misunderstood as demand being literally insatiable (and by extension, "why bother?"), but really, we're just severly underserving the market, and there are very limited price signals we can rely on to understand the cost and value of a road foot-second (or meter-second). people want more fast, affordable, on-demand, point-to-point private transportation. "induced demand" tells…

My take is that road access is severely underpriced.

If you had to pay for road access, you could easily set the price to where demand meets supply, and all roads would have well flowing traffic 24/7.

But of course "induced demand" happens when the price is $0. The same would occur for bread, phones or pianos at that price point.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#146

Post by aaron695 »

eloff wrote: post #131
aaron695 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Honestly as a 5 year old you are not going to get it. This is multi levelled. Some people just like Elon. But what's really however interesting is how Elon is changing manufacturing. It's like a new Kanban But it's not 5 year old stuff. I'd just say, I know all the other kids like rockets and think they are cool to wa…

Just a pet peeve, I hope I don't tell my kids it's "adults stuff" and leave it at that. I think kids can sometimes surprise you at how much they can understand. Explain it as simply as you can, and if they don't get it try again. If they still don't get it, well maybe it's too advanced for them, or maybe you can't explain it in a simple enough way. I know I was eternally annoyed at how much adults underestimated me g…

Fair enough, I agree.

Saying it's adult stuff to children is demeaning and can temper enthusiasm and is a bad habit to get into.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#147

Post by astrodust »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #119
astrodust wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's solve traffic by building more roads!" Elon has a lot to learn about induced demand.

Induced demand = the product is actually being used . The hoary old cliché that says, "Building roads just increases congestion," is nothing more than an exercise in measuring the wrong thing. Market demand, induced and otherwise, is a good thing, if the externalities are also addressed. That's basically Musk's whole business model.

Infrastructure operates differently from a good or service where you have a multitude of often interchangeable selections.

The easy availability of roads leads to more people driving since it's the more effective option, which in turn leads to more traffic. Eventually the system reaches equilibrium where it's busy enough that other alternatives are more desirable.

Time and time again predictions of apocalyptic traffic doom have failed to manifest when roads are removed. The traffic just goes away largely because the traffic was an artifact of the roads being there in the first place.

People are highly adaptable. They take the path of least resistance. If that path is a road, they take it. If you make the road bigger, it reduces resistance and becomes busier.

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#148

Post by astrodust »

njarboe wrote: post #83
astrodust wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's solve traffic by building more roads!" Elon has a lot to learn about induced demand.

If you believe that car travel must be innately evil, then induced demand is a problem with building more roads. More roads mean more people using them to do something they want to do. These tunnels will be toll roads, so if you just up the tolls you can have them not get jammed up. You then have a real idea of how much a tunnel can make and you can get people to invest in building more of them. Individual point-to-p…

The bad externalities of cars are numerous and extend well beyond those things you list, but primarily they create an astoundingly expensive barrier to being part of society and not someone who's left behind.

There aren't enough tunnels in the world to dig your way out of traffic problems. The more roads you make the more traffic you get.

Toll roads just increase the already staggering cost of owning a car, marginalizing even more people.

What about not doing that and instead investing in alternatives?

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#149

Post by wnevets »

mc3 wrote: post #41

ELI5... why is digging a tunnel tech news? Does Elon dig them faster or more cheaply or something? Otherwise do I submit this to HN? https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling . I think tunnels are the future though for cities. But I'd prefer trains to be running in them, or roads that only allow electric public transport. Edit. In 1988 they started work on the Channel Tunnel UK to France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

https://www.sydneymetro.info/tunnelling needs a better PR firm to make it onto the front page

Re: The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel is nearly 50% done

#150

Post by drcross »

cjhopman wrote: post #57
sambroner wrote: post #11

I don't know much about tunneling speeds, but this seems much faster than Big Bertha in Seattle although for a much smaller volume (the tunnel is narrower) and (I'm assuming) less complex location. Big Bertha - 3.5 years, ~1.75 miles, 1.5 m/yr Boring - .15 years, .35 miles, 2.33 m/yr

Big Bertha is roughly 25x the size of boring company's tunnel borer. And, while your math it totally wrong for Big Bertha, it should be 0.5 miles/yr. But if you account for the 2 years that it wasn't running for repairs then it does end up at roughly 1.3 miles/yr. Why not compare against a tunnel borer of the same size? The world's fastest tunnel borer of that size was for the tunneling of the blue mountains (describ…

They are currently building their first prototype. It seems correct that you would build a few tunnels using conventional equipment to gain experience before setting your sights on improving the state of the art, or is there something I'm missing?
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